


This War of our Worlds

by Joysweeper



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen, Hork-Bajir
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21820990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joysweeper/pseuds/Joysweeper
Summary: ”We not free as children. We not ever have free children. Even Jara never free, only hear stories at night, from slave adults caged on homeworld. Toby is the first freekawatnojandkawati.Many free adults love and keep Toby safe. So, Toby is different, but other freekawatnojgrowing, different in same way.”Toby, growing up and into her strengths.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	This War of our Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> "Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."

When Toby had just grown from being a _kawatnoj_ to a _kawati_ , her blades still small and sore and her teeth still coming in, she asked her parents to bring her something with writing on it. Jara knew just a few symbols the free ancestors had used as markers, so she couldn’t go far with those, but Human writing was interesting and no one in the valley understood it or could even reproduce more than a few symbols from memory.

At that time “anyone in the valley” meant only her, her parents, and the first five people they had rescued. Except for Balk, everyone had had Yeerks reading through their eyes for years, and they could still read Imperial Galard if they worked at it. Toby was both intensely curious and afraid of the pain and effort it would cause to write it out and teach her. They all had so much else to worry about already that it probably wouldn’t be worth what she’d learn. Human writing wouldn’t hurt anyone.

In the next few raids, over the next few full moons, the adults went and brought Fal and Iraght, who quickly opened new eyes into strength and freedom, and Shuf, who lived but struggled and spoke little, and one whose name they never knew, whose Yeerk managed to kill him when it realized it would never return to the Pool. Gaham stayed behind in the valley for each of these, partly to watch and feed Toby and partly because she was growing heavy with a new _kawatnoj_.

The raiders were focused on people, with a secondary interest in handheld Dracon beams which would make it easier to take more people. They were picking stragglers off from the outskirts of the facility Jara and Ket had escaped from. Toby understood that they had almost no chances to see let alone retrieve writing and she very rarely complained about it. 

Sometimes they encountered Human-Controllers. They didn’t have a Dracon beam yet, which meant rushing to attack anyone who saw them before they could raise the alarm. Injuries that would usually incapacitate a Hork-Bajir for hours or days outright killed Humans, even when the wounds were held closed and the little aliens carried away into the forest. They just didn’t heal. This was unfortunate, but it meant her parents could cut away the false-skins Humans used to protect their tender true-skins and bring them to her.

Most of the cut, bloodied false-skins were marked sparsely with Human symbols. The best part was the caves in them, pouch-shapes that often held items. Some were easily identified, like keys and different kinds of fire-starter. Others weren’t. Crumpled white rectangular pseudo-leaves. White twigs ending in hard round bulbs, like nuts, covered in brightly colored wrinkly skins. Boxes containing reeking white-and-tan cylinders. Metal disks, astonishingly tiny, bearing impressions of owl-like round alien faces. Packets of preserved skin holding smaller items - usually rectangular green pseudo-leaves with intricate patterns and similar alien faces to the disks, but also colorful rectangular chips. Most things seemed to bear the squarish marks of human writing.

Toby’s favorite chips had very similar patterning and different tiny, lifelike images of alien faces, which unlike the ones on the disks and the green pseudo-leaves had shading and color. She showed them to everyone. 

Balk said they were nothing, pieces of Human garbage. Toby remembered Dak’s difficulty with his friend Jagil, remembered that when starting the fire Balk squinted hard at pine needles and twigs, but also that she was the most confident about long distances. Toby insisted, held a chip close to and then further from her elder’s face. Obligingly the adult squinted at the tiny image until - “Balk see. It is a small human, like a computer picture. Too small. It hurt Balk’s head.”

“Balk is like Jagil, in the story. Jagil also could not see close things well, but far-off things better. You have different eyes and different skills,” Toby announced triumphantly. She loved the feeling of figuring something out. If Dak had ever thought it strange that his friend couldn’t recognize himself in a drawing but their own tribe cut commemorative symbols into trees when important things happened, or thought of the whys, the stories didn’t say.

“Balk do see far things best of everyone,” Balk allowed, but she was rumbling doubt. “Yeerks angry, said Balk see bad. But Toby must not be strange. Is not the way. Remember, Toby is a Hork-Bajir, not a _hruthin_. Not a Yeerk.”

This didn’t put a dent in the day. With Balk, and with Shuf indicating yes when Toby showed her and sat with her and speculated and repeated what others had said, that made it unanimous: the pictures were of Humans and in fact the ones on the chips resembled the Human-Controllers who had been killed. She had suspected as much, but it was better to confirm it.

Toby wondered if she should be sad for the Human hosts who had died, rather than excited about what they had carried. She could be, in an abstracted way, when she thought about it. Their bodies had probably come to rest inside Taxxons. In the Pool their cage-friends would be looking for them. Well, this was just how things were.

One day Iraght left the valley to follow the distant low roar they heard sometimes. He found a road cut through the forest, which was lined with things that had come from Human vehicles. When he came back he was in trouble, but Toby still got to have something he’d thought she would like. It was an amazing big flattened flower of glossy angular leaves, covered in pictures and more text. The pictures were mostly of humans in strange artificial skins, surrounded by their squared-off machines, and they were fascinating enough, but it was the writing that she liked best.

Toby slowly grew certain from the structure and the way the pictures were oriented that there was a reading order that went from the upper left to lower right in some way. There were seventy or eighty symbols, repeated so often that she speculated they represented sounds rather than words or phrases. She was sure she’d crack it eventually and understand the meaning, but no one could help her, and people didn’t seem interested in trying. Studying an alien artifact was a lonely, frustrating way to pass the time.

For a change of pace, and more context, Toby also pestered people into reciting things they had heard Humans say around the Pool while their Yeerks fed. Even though Hork-Bajir liked to speak to Hork-Bajir and were rarely cage-friends with aliens, there was a lot there. It was of course in the Human language, but she understood enough of that to go on. It seemed humans spoke like Yeerks, sometimes using long patterns of speech and elaborate vocabularies. They were also constantly saying _I_ and _you_. Those were fun words. Everyone used universal pronouns sometimes, and in the stories elders, heroes, and seers - people who had to be listened to - used them more often than names. The Human versions of those words couldn’t mean the same thing in the Human tongue, or they wouldn’t say them so much, but they still had a little frisson of importance.

One evening as Toby was repeating part of an exchange Gaham had had with a friendly Human - _God, I wish he would just let me eat a damn cheeseburger and fries, I can smell them whenever he brings me down here but they’re ‘empty calories’_ \- Balk hissed.

It was a rude noise and Toby faltered and fell silent. Balk’s neck was stretched up and swaying, but she spoke calmly. “Don’t tell Toby things like that. Toby, talk like a Hork-Bajir.”

That was even ruder than the hissing, and there was a shocked moment of quiet before Ket and then Jara started rumbling disapproval. Gaham outright snorted disagreement and said, “I tell Toby what she asks to hear. It is good to understand Human folk.”

“It is _not_ good. Why does a _kawati_ need to know Human talk? It is rude to ask so much. Being curious and told everything is like going to look for the road.” Swaying her neck, Balk jutted her horns towards Iraght, who shrank back. It looked like he had been about to speak.

The pitch of Jara and Ket’s rumbling changed. Too young to rumble in a satisfactory way, though she would have liked to - why should Balk appeal to decorum when she was being so rude herself? - Toby watched. Balk had been so sweet and loving when she was a _kawatnoj_. Somehow things had changed.

Gaham rumbled doubt. “If Toby is a seer, it is not rude to ask. It is correct to answer a seer’s questions.”

“Toby is not a seer,” Balk said baldly. That set off a round of rumbling intense enough to make the ground vibrate. Jara’s neck rose, followed by others. Balk narrowed her eyes and lifted her beak, signalling that she had more to say.

Everyone waited, subsiding into quiet. Toby wanted to interrupt and make her own case, but she caught some sharp glances when she shifted. It was fine for her to talk at the fire, but anything she said into a serious conversation would be seen as childish and irrelevant.

Finally Balk marshaled her thoughts and laid them out. ”We not free as children. We not ever have free children. Even Jara never free, only hear stories at night, from slave adults caged on homeworld. Toby is the first free _kawatnoj_ and _kawati._ Many free adults love and keep Toby safe. So, Toby is different, but other free _kawatnoj_ growing, different in same way.”

In the pause that followed Gaham rearranged her feet and laid her hands over her belly, stretched out now so that skin was visible between the scales. She had no comment.

Toby’s parents weren’t so convinced, taking up the tone of doubt. Balk straightened her neck defiantly. “Why want Toby to be a seer? Seer are like _hruthin_. Useless! Talk like Yeerk. Hork-Bajir bow heads, follow anyone who talks like that.”

Now almost everyone was either rumbling or moving their beaks in uncertain ways. Ket thumped her tail on the ground. “‘Useless’!” She snorted. “Dak first to fight Yeerks, first to teach war.”

“Ket not hear _kalashi’s_ story. Dak more _hruthin_ than Hork-Bajir,” Balk sneered. She was rumbling too now, and gathering her feet underneath her. “Whined about teaching us war. Too different for us. Stop fighting to _kalash_ a proud _hruthin_.”

Jara stood up. “Dak my father’s father,” he started, jerking his head forwards. “Balk stupid-angry. You should be sorry.”

The rumbling at the lower limits of her hearing seemed to vibrate her whole body. Vaguely wishing she could creep away, Toby looked about for a good direction and saw Shuf curled up, clasping her hands around her head, covering her ears in a posture of misery.

“Shuf-” Toby cleared her throat. She couldn’t quite hear her own voice. Hoping not to draw attention by standing she got to all fours like a _kawatnoj_ , walking with her weight on her knuckles, and went to carefully kiss her elder. Shuf’s horns carried the vibration of an unheard keen, and she didn’t react to being touched.

Bracing herself, Toby stood up. She cried, “You scare Shuf!” and winced inside at how high and babyish her voice was. “Feel shame! You fight about me and scare Shuf.”

She’d wanted everyone to look at her and subside, but she got a few glances, no more. Jara and Balk were standing circling each other now, swiping blades viciously in each other’s directions. It was like the mock-fights some of the young adults got into when they were excited enough, but she’d never seen her father or Balk get into one. Maybe it wasn’t a _mock_ fight.

Toby tugged on Shuf’s hand. Moving on all fours herself, Shuf allowed Toby to lead her away from the fire, into the quiet darkness. They could hear the way the rumbling carried, but not just what was going on. Toby hoped this was the right thing to do. She was too young for them to listen to her. Ket would pull them apart if she had to, and others would back her.

Shuf hunkered down, keening in that quiet, thready way she had. Many things upset Shuf, but normally not to this extent. Toby sat with her and made herself feel more useful with soothing touches and gestures, as if Shuf had had a nightmare. The rumbling in the direction of the fire faded out and she hadn’t heard any raised voices, so maybe things were okay, but she didn’t want to go and see now.

This was her fault. Well, it was Balk’s fault, but she was upsetting Balk somehow and Balk was upsetting everyone else, even her parents. Maybe it would be better if Toby wasn’t… upsetting in the first place. A rift between her parents and the first person they had rescued... Of course Jara and Ket were important, but they were set apart somehow from Balk and everyone who came after. They had never opened new eyes, as the others called it, when the Yeerks that controlled them died inside their heads. There were things they couldn’t understand. Toby, free at the age of first infestation, never yet permitted to even see a Controller, was even further removed. Even Gaham and Iraght would tell her little, just that the fugue was bad and it had changed them, and that was why they didn’t use the names her parents had called them in the cages. Maybe it was why Shuf had so much trouble.

As whatever was happening near the fire wound down, Shuf had calmed too. Now she sighed and raised her head, her throat working, seeming like she was trying to climb up out of a deep pit. Sometimes this took a while. Toby waited.

“It is bad to fight,” Shuf said quietly. “Eye is happy.”

Toby suppressed a sigh and didn’t respond until she was sure Shuf wasn’t going to elaborate. “The eye thing again? Toby doesn’t understand, can’t Shuf explain?”

Shuf looked down. Still a no, apparently.

“Don't worry. They won’t fight about that again,” she said heavily. It would be _exciting_ to be a Seer. It would mean being listened to around the fire, even when things were heated. It would be a way she could keep the valley safe without being big and strong yet. And there was such a pleasure in understanding things, in using more and longer words, in speaking with weight. One day it might be important to speak as aliens did and know how they thought. They had power the Hork-Bajir lacked. But it couldn’t be worth nights like this, and worse than this.

Toby devoted more of her time to playing, climbing and running and building her skill in the trees before she grew too heavy to move freely in them. Iraght joined her some of the time but he was almost two years old, just a foot under adult height and therefore rarely able to stray far past a sturdy trunk. One of her finest accomplishments was the time they coaxed Shuf into climbing, very slowly, though getting her down again was much less wonderful.

Jara complained sometimes about how small and fragile Earth trees were, only a few of them wide enough at the base that they couldn’t be circled with an adult’s arms. He was the only person who’d seen the homeworld. Others had fond memories of climbing semi-free in the bamboo reed islands on Mak, or less evocative memories of more institutionalized production sites.

Toby liked to lay on the forest floor, sinking the blades on her elbows and spine into it like roots, looking up at the canopy and trying to imagine the trees of home. Trees that beckoned Mother Sky with their crowns and held down Father Deep with their roots, that adults could climb as fast and heedlessly as squirrels climbed these. That could be lived in without ever having to touch the ground. Everyone she knew could live in one tree like that and never feel crowded.

Gaham soon bore a _kawatnoj_ that she named Bek. Everyone doted over him even though he was very boring and did nothing but cling, sleep, whimper, and raise his head for lect. Iraght, instantly smitten, began to lect in sympathy and was added to the feeding rota, an ability and position which he was unbearably smug about. Shuf was also affected strongly, sometimes reaching to touch Bek as gently as if he was born without skin, sometimes avoiding the sight of him.

No one really brought it up but Toby knew the people who had seen her as a newborn were comparing them. She was sure she had been more interesting. Pickier, though she had to be fair, her parents hadn’t known as much about eating from Earth trees when she was born and their lect had been bitter sometimes.

A week later there was a very successful raid where two people were saved. Toby wasn’t allowed into the caves where they were held, guarded and restrained, waiting for their Yeerks to die. Her mother came dripping from the lake and sat with her to explain how the raid had gone, the things that had gone well and less well, inviting Toby to suggest ideas.

One of the Controllers had been difficult on the way back, and Ket was bothered. “Shae woke. Fought. Kept fighting. There was very great noise, and Ket feared followers. No time to bury heis head. So, Balk and Fehet held heim. I hurt heim. Shae will heal, but slow.”

“Why do you say… shay?” It was a blurring of pronouns she thought she’d heard in a couple of stories, but had maybe heard incorrectly.

Ket smiled. “Different horns. Two here,” and she indicated her brow horns, but low on them, like they were small; _kawati_ horn blades on an adult’s head. “Two here.” She touched between them, the line from the bridge of her snout to the back of her head, where three horns grew in males.

“ _Four_ horns,” Toby said, making sure.

“Yes. This happens sometimes. Not common, not rare. Three, four, five horns. Cannot always tell until _kawati_. Lucky, cannot have children. Often go to more important Yeerks.” Toby winced. There was a lot that people didn’t tell her directly, but she understood why being infertile would make someone lucky. Ket leaned down and kissed her. “It is more than lucky to have you, here.”

Toby sat with her for a while, and then asked “What if you could put something on a Controller’s face? A hole in the ground, but you carry it?”

In the end they sacrificed some of her store of Human false-skins making a kind of bag Ket could fill with mud and take on the next raid. It didn’t seem to be as good as the ground, but they were hopeful that it would confuse Yeerks.

The injured Hork-Bajir survived the death of heis Yeerk, opening new eyes and becoming clearheaded. Toby went to see heis; she had coached herself not to stare at heis horns, but actually found the great jagged scars and heis general weakness much more glaring. Shae introduced heiself as Zilla and asked after Toby’s name. As it turned out, they both had human names, though Zilla had been a nickname given by a human cage-friend up on the Pool ship.

Unfortunately shae didn’t seem to have a grudge towards Balk and in fact the two started courting, so human friends were then an off-limits topic.

Toby began to argue with her parents about weaning. Surely a growing _kawati_ with her first set of teeth and growing blades didn’t need food chewed by adults. She ate some things by herself already. Besides Jara and Ket, people rarely fed her without her asking anymore. Her parents united to tell her that the others were distracted by feeding Bek and she needed to ask, and as a growing _kawati_ she absolutely needed to eat softened enriched things. Earth trees weren’t as good as on homeworld, or as nourishing as supplemented Yeerk rations, so she still needed lect with her meals.

In a fit of outrage Toby tried proving her independence. Naturally she had little trouble with foods she’d already been taking intact or mostly so. Sap, green cones, berries and buds, larvae. But her jaws weren’t up to acorns, dry cones, or heavy bark. Immediately, remembering offhand mentions in stories of people eating bark altered by fire, ribboned or ground, soaked in tinctures and so on, she stripped a quantity and set to finding ways to soften it.

She didn’t get very far before Balk, of _course_ , discovered her and pointed out that by cutting so much bark horizontally from the trunk of one tree she had half-killed it, and reminded her that no one was permitted to kill a grown and healthy tree without there being a consensus. It was humiliating, especially when she started telling others. The next-smallest people in the valley were tiny bladeless Bek and Iraght, who was two feet taller than her, so she was the only person who could have done it. Everyone would have known anyway, they would have just politely said nothing.

Jara heard and took Toby on a walk, just the two of them. He told her that Earth trees were small and fragile and needed most of their bark to live, and about how Jara and Ket had killed several before they understood how to cause the least harm harvesting. The free Hork-Bajir had to be careful and also eat many acorns and other seeds or they would kill every tree and have to leave the valley.

Gently he ended with, “Toby know all these things. We tell every new person this. You hear it many times now.” And she did, that was the thing. Yeerks didn’t even always feed people bark. Mostly it was variations on woodpulp, rendered bamboo reed, or sawdust compressed into pellets with nutrient solution on the side, completely removed from the source. So of course most of the newly-freed had to be taught to care for trees. She did not have that excuse.

“Toby knows,” she said miserably, letting her tail drag on the ground so that the growing hook on the end gouged into it. “I must not be a Seer, or I would remember.”

They were quiet for a while, walking in the leaf-dappled sunlight. So that she could keep up, Jara would take a step and pause and step again, and she couldn’t help thinking if he took small, slow steps instead they could walk astride. Then, he stopped to face her.

“Toby. Seers must think, must remember like every other person. Still make mistakes.” Jara touched her on the shoulder so that she looked up. “You _are_ a Seer. I watch you, Ket watch you, every day. You are different. We were not sure. Then Toby say, try to make trails with a smell.”

It _had_ been her idea, a long time ago now, to have one person take hemlock root and find an approach to the facility in the day, then return to less fraught territory, damaging the root and touching it to the trees up at the level of a raised beak as they went. Then at night, raiders confidently followed the odor there and back in the dark. It blended with the smells of the forest to anyone not looking for it and faded by the next day.

Searchers had come close to the valley, before the raiders started doing that. They had always turned away frustrated, but she didn’t trust that this would always be so.

“You were cutting marks already, I thought the Yeerks could see them and follow. Ket helped me find the right root.” Had it been a new thought? Did she want him to think it was?

“Yes. Jara sees when Toby shows. But you see very fast. You look and then you know what Yeerks will see. Then, so fast, Toby knows what Yeerks will _not_ see. Have the answer. And still a _kawatnoj_!” His eyes had gone intense. She knew that look, the way he looked at the free-born together.

“Balk doesn’t want me to be a seer,” she said. “Toby saw her want to fight you.”

“Balk is scared. This is more important than Balk, what Balk likes," he said with a dismissive toss of his head. "Earth is human world, not homeworld. We keep you safe. We want you happy. Is not a kind thing for Toby to be seer. But there is very much we need. I see past most clearly. Ket see present. You see future.”

Toby was over half his height by then and bladed, too big and sharp to be carried like a _kawatnoj_ , but Jara accepted the work and the small wounds and picked her up to carry.

That evening Tobias visited them for the first time since Toby was born. She was a bit intimidated when she came to the evening fire and saw him talking to her father, so she didn’t put herself forwards. Instead she sat besides her mother and peered curiously at him. Somehow she had imagined him larger, maybe looking less like a normal bird.

He stayed through the night as Jara told the story of aliens coming to the homeworld and what had happened then. It was usually a saga of several nights, but Jara moved through it quickly, skimming over some of Toby’s favorite parts, like everything about Dak’s family, and how his tribe came to accept him as a seer. Some of the others sharing the fire shifted and traded looks, or rumbled quietly. They noticed too, but it was unthinkable to interrupt someone’s first telling.

Ket ran her hand down Toby’s back, avoiding her blades. Toby looked back and saw her smile and gesture with her beak back at Jara. Watching her father sway and speak across the fire from the tiny alien who she was named for, Toby felt a chill. She saw suddenly what he was doing. 

Tobias and that small band of morph-enabled humans plus one Andalite had helped Jara and Ket once, months ago. Even that once there had been tension. Tobias had even threatened to leave them to be killed or infested unless he had contact from the remote person that had called out and told her parents to run, and while he had visited once shortly after Jara and Ket were established, neither he nor the others had come or helped in the time since. Now, Jara was trying to influence the way Tobias thought.

The changes to the story must have taken months. All those careful edits of the saga as he normally told it, all to tie the Hork-Bajir to the humans. To say _This is what happened to us, and this is what could happen to you. These are our allies who were faithless. This is our enemy who is your enemy_. And of course, _we have lost everything but we are still here_.

She knew that Jara wouldn’t think of it in all the ways Toby did, not in terms of influencing a fickle ally. But he was speaking directly to Tobias, telling _him_ the story. She’d never thought that this was possible, to use a story like this. Now she had to wonder if there hadn’t been other things in the other stories all along.

Tobias had gone still, entranced. Despite herself Toby also fell into a kind of trance, almost asleep. Balk went with Zilla up into the nesting-tree she had claimed, which trembled as they climbed. Others dozed off in place as Jara talked on through the night.

As dawn broke Jara found a place to stop. He didn’t go into the effects of the Quantum Virus and the way the war dissolved. He didn’t talk about the dissident Arn who inoculated Dak and Aldrea against the virus, but then, the Arn in this version were a condensed monolith of unhelpful disdain. He didn’t talk about the last message of the Speaking Trees, _come to us you will live_ , and the trickle of survivors and fugitives into captivity. And all the rest. He stopped with Dak standing with the transformed Aldrea, clinging to the hope that he could not see.

And then Jara surprised her again, introducing her to her namesake as different. Ket reinforcing that. Tobias started to fly away, but he circled back.

<When you say Toby is different…>

Jara had done it on purpose - ended with the hope Dak wanted to still exist, and then using the phrase that was always associated with Seers. The story was also for her. She glanced around at the sleepy people around the ashes of the fire. Gaham handing a squirming Bek to Iraght. Shuf still asleep, more peaceful than when she was awake. The expectant look in her parents’ eyes. Though they were the only two looking directly at her, but she could feel the others’ attention. Even if Balk was asleep, she would hear about this soon.

Dak had surely felt this apprehension, every seer surely did, but he hadn’t known anything about the task that was ahead of him. Even if she denied it, it would still be true. Balk could be unhappy about it but it was still true. She could still do this. She had to do this.

Toby looked up and smiled through a sense of sudden grief. “Yes, Tobias, friend of the Hork-Bajir. Yes, I am different.”


End file.
